In my humble opinion one of the worst things that ever happened to the separation of work and personal life was mobile e-mail. I was lying in bed the other night when I realized that my wife and I were both e-mailing from our I-Phones before saying good night and turning out the lights. Are you kidding me?
On a recent trip to Canada I had the data roaming feature turned off on my phone. I found I was actually one if the 56% of people who became anxious over not being able to check my e-mail continually during the trip. E-mail addiction is out of control and if you don’t believe me check out the stats below that I collected from lifestyle author Tim Ferris’ blog site.
66% of people read email seven days a week and expect to receive a response the same day [18].
61% continue to check email while on vacation [19].
56% have anxiety if they can’t access email [20].
“Crackberry” was the official winner of the 2006 Word-of-the-Year as selected by the editorial staff of Webster’s New World College Dictionary. Blackberry addiction has been labeled “similar to drugs” in a study performed by Rutgers University; millions of users are now able unable to go more than five minutes without checking e-mail.
According to online surveys of more than 4,000 people, conducted jointly by AOL and the Opinion Research Corporation and reported in 2005:
41% of Americans check e-mail first thing in the morning
- 18% check e-mail right after dinner
- 14% check e-mail right when they get home from work
- 14% check e-mail right before they go to bed
- 40% have checked their e-mail in the middle of the night
More than one in four (26%) say they can’t go more than two to three days without checking email, and they check it everywhere:
- In bed – 23%
- In class – 12%
- In business meetings – 8%
- At the beach or pool – 6%
- In the bathroom – 4%
- While driving – 4%
- In church – 1%
Being “e-mailed” (like blackmailed) worse than being stoned?
In 2005, a psychiatrist at King’s College in London administered IQ tests to three groups: the first did nothing but perform the IQ test, the second was distracted by e-mail and ringing phones and the third was stoned on marijuana. Not surprisingly, the first group did better than the other two by an average of 10 points. The e-mailers, on the other hands, did worse than the smokers by an average of 6 points [21].
Wow, pretty scary stuff. Considering I am as guilty as most of the people in the surveys cited above I have no room to give advice on this one other than to say I am going to take action. Starting today I am turning off my data feature at night and not turning it back on until the following morning. In the words of the famous television campaigns I plan to “just say no!”
Chuck Terry is the Executive Vice President and CSO of Carew International and is regular contributor to Carew’s blog – Executive Insights
Carew International is a leader in sales training and leadership development; specializing in comprehensive, proven training programs for sales, sales management and customer service excellence. For over 30 years, Carew has earned its reputation of delivering increased productivity and profitability to our valued clients world wide.
